


Penguin Problems

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-21
Updated: 2007-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 09:49:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arnold Rimmer has always been his own worst enemy. It's just that sometimes, that enemy takes on an unexpected form.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penguin Problems

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Consent issues.

"Hol?" Lister looked up, craning his head, searching for one of the computer's many near-hidden monitors. He didn't quite know why; she could hear him well enough without him seeing her, but Lister liked talking to an actual face.

"Hullo, Dave." The voice was disembodied, to Lister's disappointment. He shuffled his feet, restlessly. No one was around, and he was feeling bored. Well, more bored than usual. If nothing else, he could usually always count on Rimmer to be there to annoy, but the hologram was nowhere to be seen. Lister was a little worried he'd gone off on one of his treks into the diesel decks. Sometimes he'd be gone for weeks, and life was somehow oddly dull without him.

"Where's Rimmer?"

Holly's voice became, for a moment, utterly impersonal. "Arnold Rimmer is not on board this vessel."

"What?" Lister started.

"Nah, only foolin'. I just always wanted to say that. He's in his quarters."

"No, he's not. I was just there."

Holly's voice gave the impression of eyes being rolled. "Not _your_ quarters; _his_ quarters. I just put him in there this morning."

Lister sighed. This would happen, from time to time, usually after one of Lister's lengthier drunken binges. Rimmer would get it into his head to move, and would pester the skutters to move his meager belongings somewhere else. Within a fortnight he would invariably be back, mumbling some feeble excuse about the view or the level of engine noise not being up to his standards. "He's moving again?"

"Yeah. Good thing too, really, considering."

Those little alarm bells that, among other things, told Lister when a fight was about to break out in a bar, or when Rimmer was about to start one of this lengthier RISK stories, started to go off. "What do ya mean, 'considering'?"

Sighing, Holly turned on the light above a nearby door. "You'd better come have a look."

  
Lister stood in the small briefing room, watching the screen where Rimmer seemed to be having a conversation with himself. The sound was off, so it was hard to tell what it was all about, but he seemed very agitated. From time to time he would turn around, angrily, and try to slam his right fist against the table, ultimately failing and losing his balance when it went straight through it. "What's he doing?"

"Look closer."

Taking a few steps forward, Lister narrowed his eyes, blinking at the screen. Suddenly, he flung himself back again, eyes wide. "Smegging hell!" On Rimmer's right hand, currently trying to strangle him, was a small penguin hand-puppet. Lister clutched his own throat in sympathy. "I thought we got rid of the virus!"

"We did. That's not the virus."

"Then _what the smeg is it?_ "

On the screen, Rimmer had retreated to his bunk, holding his hand at an arms length. "Mister Flibble is a subroutine spontaneously created by his subconscious during the infection. I flushed the virus out of his system, but as the subroutine wasn't part of that, it remained. I don't know why it didn't manifest before now, but fortunately he was inside his new quarters when it happened, so I was able to lock him up in there."

Lister swallowed. "Can't you do something?"

Holly appeared on the screen, replacing, to Lister's relief, the surveillance feed. "Oh yeah, sure, there're plenty of things we can do. Unfortunately, most of them involve erasing his personality, and starting from scratch."

"Tempting though that is, what're the other options?"

"Just one, really. Shutting his light bee down and re-booting it."

"So do that then." The room felt terribly empty all of a sudden, and a little cold. Lister wrapped his arms around himself.

"Can't. The subroutine is stopping me from remote-controlling it, somehow. Someone'll have to go in there and shut it off manually."

Lister made a face. "What; go in there, stick their hand in his chest and then what; press a button?"

Holly nodded, nonplussed. "In short, yeah."

"But..." Lister waved his hands about, not entirely sure where to begin. "Wouldn't anyone who went in there get a face full of hex-ray beams first thing?"

"No, that was all part of the virus. It's just a deranged puppet now. No telling what it'll do to Arn, though." Holly's face faded, the screen again showing Rimmer's new quarters. Rimmer was sitting on the bed still, his face in his left hand, while the puppet seemed to be pecking at his right ear.

Sighing deeply, Lister shook his head. "All right. All right. Tell me where he is."

"I didn't say you had to do it."

"Yeah, well, who else is gonna, eh?" He gave the screen a look of pity and resignation. "Just turn that off, would ya?"

  
Rimmer didn't know how he had come to take his top off, or why the penguin now seemed to be nibbling at his undershirt. He had stopped questioning things like that. It was a nightmare. When he had been in the grip of the virus, Mister Flibble had spoken to him, and it had all made perfect sense, in a stark raving mad sort of way. Now, all he heard when it whispered in his ear was a very angry, unintelligible sort of squawk. Rimmer's natural respect for authority made him desperately want to obey, but he had no idea what the thing wanted him to do!

"Listen," he tried again, as the beak plucked at one of his nipples through the cloth, "I'll do anything you want, really. I'm really good at following orders. Sometimes even before people issue them!"

The bird ignored him, and began to pull his undershirt out of his uniform trousers. Rimmer swallowed.

"I have no idea what you're doing, but if you could just.."

Raising his little, plushy head, Mister Flibble gave Rimmer an unmistakably haughty stare.

"Right. I'll... I'll..." The potential sentence struggled for a moment before shriveling up on Rimmer's tongue and dying, feebly.

Rimmer's first instinct had, of course, been to run away. Unfortunately it was rather difficult to run away from your own right hand. After a brief struggle, they had reached this compromise; the puppet did whatever it wanted, and Rimmer stayed the hell out of its way. Strictly speaking, this wasn't much of a compromise, Rimmer knew, but he wasn't exactly awash in options. Now, he leaned back as far as he could against the back wall of his bunk, watching Mister Flibble work with trepidation.

"What are you doing?" Wincing at the shrill note of panic in his voice, Rimmer tried to school himself to calm. The trouble was, he had never really excelled at anything in school, excepting the first few years of geography, where all you had to do was to color in maps. Rimmer had been good at that. Very, very good. Unfortunately, that was nothing like trying to remain calm when being undressed by a deranged penguin.

Swallowing, Rimmer could only watch as Mister Flibble unfastened his trousers, and the sickening realization that there was really only one thing the puppet could have in mind hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut.

"Oh... no!" Rimmer knew better than to think that at least things couldn't get worse, because experience had taught him things could _always_ get worse. Nevertheless, the thought did strike him that even his miserable life would be hard pressed to top a penguin hand-puppet trying to suck him off. Then a dry, fluffy mouth enveloped him, and Rimmer chided himself for his moment of weakness, because there the worse was already; he was _enjoying_ it. He leaned his head back in defeat and shame, and at that precise moment, a great many things happened in very rapid succession.

The door opened, revealing Lister

Rimmer, seeing him, went "Gaaarrggh!?" and tried to hide behind himself.

Mister Flibble let go, leaving Rimmer's straining erection exposed, cold, vulnerable and confused.

Lister, after a split-second horrified double-take, jumped from his position, grabbing Mister Flibble around his plushy neck with one hand, and thrusting his other hand deeply into Rimmer's chest.

Gasping, Rimmer yelled "smeg-for-brains," as Lister's hand went right through the hologrammatic bird, but then all fell silent, and Lister, his thumb still on the 'reset' button, was left with a warm, lightly pulsing light-bee in his hand. Blinking, he tried to wash away the image of Rimmer's erect penis, which had, seconds ago, been right in front of his face.

  
The parade of skutters drove happily into the room, each holding a small, official JMC suitcase. Lister watched over the top of his beer as they deposited them in a little tower by the bunks, then scurried out. Presently, a much larger figure appeared in the doorway. "Listy," it said, in an oddly quiet sort of tone.

"So yer moving back in, then?"

"Yes."

"Feeling better?"

"Yes."

"Good. Holly says yer all set; she's scrubbed the bee clean." When Rimmer made no move to speak or come inside, Lister shrugged, turning his attention back to his beer, and the AR manual he was trying to figure out cheat codes from. When Rimmer finally did speak again, the abruptness nearly knocked Lister out of his seat.

"I..." he cleared his throat, and took one small step inside, nearly walking through one of the skutters, which had set about unpacking the suitcases. "I wanted to say..." He grimaced, clearly finding this difficult. Lister grinned.

"Ya don't have to say it, man. It's OK. Don't flatter yerself; I wasn't doing it fer you. None of us would have wanted that penguin stuck on yer arm forever."

Rimmer frowned, as if taken aback, then crossed his arms, not meeting Lister's eyes. "No... it's not that. I mean... thank you for switching me back on."

With a start, Lister looked up to face him, but Rimmer had already turned away, this time actually walking through a skutter that was sorting through his name labeled underwear. As various Rimmerine items were restored to their accustomed place, Lister watched Rimmer's retreating back, turning his drink over and over in his hands, and frowning.

Eventually, he smiled.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed this story, and you like Red Dwarf slash, check out the [Red Dwarf Slash Community on Livejournal](http://community.livejournal.com/fanfic100/profile), home of excellent slash writers!


End file.
